{"id":428314,"date":"2026-02-16T07:45:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-16T07:45:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/428314\/"},"modified":"2026-02-16T07:45:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-16T07:45:13","slug":"ireland-20-13-italy-azzurri-captain-michele-lamaro-says-perception-shift-means-a-lot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/428314\/","title":{"rendered":"Ireland 20-13 Italy: Azzurri captain Michele Lamaro says perception shift &#8216;means a lot&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">When Quesada and Lamaro last led Italy into a match in Dublin, they lost 36-0. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, on Saturday, the Azzurri faced an Irish side lacking confidence after a bruising defeat by France in Paris last week. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Obviously we wanted to take advantage of that. We knew if we put them under scoreboard pressure, it would have been very difficult for them. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I&#8217;ve been in that situation before around mindsets. You have to perform and beat the team in front of you but if you&#8217;re down after 20, 30 minutes, it can become a real pain in&#8230;I don&#8217;t say where. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;They have some unbelievable players and they showed how much they care for this group and country. You always expect Ireland to be a world-class team. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Ups and downs happen to every team in the world. At the moment, they haven&#8217;t been what they want to be but I&#8217;m pretty sure they have all the abilities to get back.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Lamaro also ended Italy&#8217;s post-match news conference with an unprompted tribute to Hollie Davidson after the Scottish official became the first woman to referee a men&#8217;s Six Nations game.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I just want to congratulate her,&#8221; he said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;She has been doing so much for world rugby and our game and I think it&#8217;s an important thing to say. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;I appreciated the work we did together today on the pitch. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;Whatever the decision was, I was backing her and making sure everything was going the right way so I just want to congratulate her and thank her for the effort on the field.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Quesada and Lamaro last led Italy into a match in Dublin, they lost 36-0. However, on Saturday,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":428315,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-428314","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428314","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428314"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428314\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/428315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428314"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428314"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428314"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}